In fact, all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly fiat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time is infinite. This means that even if there were events before the big bang, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward, because predictability would break down at the big bang.
Correspondingly, if, as is the case, we know only what has happened since the big bang, we could not determine what happened beforehand. As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences, so they should not form part of a scientific model of the universe. We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that time had a beginning at the big bang.
Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.) There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang. The proposal that gained widest support was called the steady state theory. It was suggested in 1948 by two refugees from Nazi-occupied Austria, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, together with a Briton, Fred Hoyle, who had worked with them on the development of radar during the war. The idea was that as the galaxies moved away from each other, new galaxies were continually forming in the gaps in between, from new matter that was being continually created. The universe would therefore look roughly the same at all times as well as at all points of space. The steady state theory required a modification of general relativity to allow for the continual creation of matter, but the rate that was involved was so low (about one particle per cubic kilometer per year) that it was not in conflict with experiment. The theory was a good scientific theory, in the sense described in Chapter 1: it was simple and it made definite predictions that could be tested by observation. One of these predictions was that the number of galaxies or similar objects in any given volume of space should be the same wherever and whenever we look in the universe. In the late 1950s and early 1960s a survey of sources of radio waves from outer space was carried out at Cambridge by a group of astronomers led by Martin Ryle (who had also worked with Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle on radar during the war). The Cambridge group showed that most of these radio sources must lie outside our galaxy (indeed many of them could be identified with other galaxies) and also that there were many more weak sources than strong ones.
Radar 雷達
Survey 調查
事實上，我們所有的科學理論都是基於空間——時間是光滑的和幾乎平坦的基礎上被表述的，所以它們在空間——時間曲率為無窮大的大爆炸點處失效。這表明，即使在大爆炸前存在事件，人們也不可能用之去確定之後所要發生的事件，因為可預見性在大爆炸處失效了。
正是這樣，與之相應的，如果我們只知道在大爆炸後發生的事件，我們也不能確定在這之前發生的事件。就我們而言，發生於大爆炸之前的事件不能有後果，所以並不構成我們宇宙的科學模型的一部分。因此，我們應將它們從我們模型中割除掉，並宣稱時間是從大爆炸開始的。
很多人不喜歡時間有個開端的觀念，可能是因為它略帶有神的干涉的味道。（另一方面，天主教抓住了大爆炸模型，並在1951年正式宣佈，它和《聖經》相一致。）所以，許多人企圖避免大爆炸曾經存在過的這一結論。所謂的穩態理論得到過最廣泛的支持。這是由兩個納粹佔領的奧地利來的難民，赫曼·邦迪和托馬斯·高爾德，以及一個戰時和他們一道從事研製雷達的英國人，弗雷得·霍伊爾於1948年共同提出的。其想法是，當星系互相離開時，在它們中的間隙由正在連續產生的新物質不斷地形成新的星系。因此，在空間的所有地方以及在所有的時間，宇宙看起來大致是相同的。穩態理論需要對廣義相對論進行修正，使之允許物質的。連續生成，但是其產生率是如此之低（大約每立方公里每年才產生一個粒子），以至於不與實驗相沖突。在第一章敘述的意義上，這是一個好的科學理論：它非常簡單，並做出確定的預言讓觀察檢驗。其中一個預言是，我們在宇宙的任何時候任何地方看給定的空間體積內星系或類似物體的數目必須一樣。本世紀50年代晚期和60年代早期，由馬丁·賴爾（他戰時也和邦迪·高爾德以及霍伊爾共事作雷達研究）領導的一個天文學家小組在劍橋對從外空間來的射電源進行了普查。這個小組指出，這些射電源的大部分是位於我們星系之外（它們之中的許多確實可被認證與其他星系相關），並且存在的弱源比強源多得多。
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